The Tongue Has Its Secrets

Donna Snyder's work as an activist lawyer advocating on behalf of indigenous people, immigrant workers, and people with disabilities has garnered multiple prizes and recognitions. In 1995 she founded the grassroots, not-for-profit Tumblewords Project in the West Texas/Southern New Mexico/Northern Chihuahua region. She continues to coordinate its free weekly workshops, occasional publications, and performance events in the El Paso area.

Reviews

"Snyder is a poet who tongues the language of birds, delves into the minds of sybils, explores connections with animals. She tests the boundaries of nothingness and somethingness. Donna Snyder's poems are like N shu: secrets cast skywards like a cipher for those who know, to read."

Susan Hawthorne, poet and author of Lupa and Lamb

"Powerful images, passion between lines, revisiting female mythological figures, and questioning violence against women are crucial in these poems. Snyder reinvents herself through these stanzas, and raises her voice in each of the polychromatic verses full of Latino as well as north European myths, full of words as vaporous signs."

X nath Caraza, recipient of the 2015 International Book Award for Poetry

"The Tongue Has Its Secrets celebrates the feminine principle in all manifestations -- from its dark root in the earth, the blood & sacrifice & song of mother & daughter, up to the chariot moon ridden by the fertile goddess through skies resplendent with her constellations."

Amalio Madue o, poet